Tales Of Graces Unveiled for Wii

Namco Bandai this week announced not one but three new releases in the long-running Tales series by year's end, among them Tales Of Grace, developed exclusively for the Wii.

First revealed in late 2008 via an unnamed trailer, Tales Of Grace serves as the latest "mothership" title of the series and shares the same cel-shaded graphical style as last year's Tales Of Symphonia 2. The game is set to take place in a world known as Efinea and feature an eighteen-year-old protagonist named Asbel Lhant on a quest for inner strength.

New to Tales Of Graces is the "Style Shift Linear Motion Battle System", which functions similarly to the real-time combat system seen in past Symphonia titles but with the addition of two different fighting styles for each character that can be switched on the fly. Exploration has also been streamlined, with the player moving directly between dungeons, fields and towns rather than using the overworld system used previously.

Tales Of Graces is set for release in Japan during Q4 2009. An international release has yet to be announced, but Namco are usually reliable as far as main-entry Tales games go, so a holiday release wouldn't be totally out of the question.

As always, keep your eye on Nintendo Life for more news and previews as Tales Of Graces as it comes to hand.

They didn't release the DS games here either which is a shame. I don't think we should get our hopes up. I'm on the DS browser too. Gotta say I'm liking my DSi.Hey, I see you've gone back to your old avatar Corbie.

Ugh. While I liked Tales of Symphonia, that's about all I need. Plus, after big-name action games like Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden, it's a lot harder to go back to games like this, which tend to feel more like lesser action games, brought down by a bunch of stats and numbers, and excessively long story sequences. I think I'll stick with my guns and leave this one to rot.